Justus Uitermark

Complex contention: analyzing power dynamics within Anonymous

Abstract Anonymous is notoriously elusive as the movement takes on radically different guises, constantly mutates, and traverses national borders and ideological divides. Since Anonymous is difficult to grasp with conventional social movement theory, this paper uses insights from complexity theory to analyze the movement’s evolution in general and its dynamics of power in particular. While participants in Anonymous radically reject hierarchy and leadership, dominant groups emerged at various points in the movement’s evolution. This paper aims to explain how such dominant groups emerge and concentrate power and how they subsequently dissolve and lose power. Drawing on ethnographic research as well as secondary sources, it identifies mechanisms of power concentration and diffusion within nominally horizontalist movements.

Planning for social justice: Strategies, dilemmas, tradeoffs

This article charts predicaments and conundrums associated with the ambition to plan for social justice. Drawing from classical theory on the roles of intellectuals, we identify what we call the “power of representation dilemma.” This dilemma arises because the credentials, knowledge, and skills of intellectuals (like urban planners) make them into powerful agents of social justice but at the same time can put them in a position of power in relation to the very communities they represent and serve. We develop a typology of various strategies for contending with this dilemma and conclude there are no clean ways to resolve the dilemma as each strategy has significant tradeoffs. We encourage a “realpolitik of social justice,” whereby planners become cognizant that there are only imperfect strategies to engage in the politics of social justice. Recognition of their fallibility in the pursuit of noble ideals will make them more reflexive and capable of responding to the inevitability of new injustices and silencings that arise when planning for social justice.

Cities and Social Movements: Immigrant Rights Activism in the United States, France, and the Netherlands, 1970-2015

Through historical and comparative research on the immigrant rights movements of the United States, France and the Netherlands, Cities and Social Movements examines how small resistances against restrictive immigration policies do – or don’t – develop into large and sustained mobilizations.

The networked grassroots. How radicals outflanked reformists in the United States’ immigrant rights movement

ABSTRACT This paper accounts for important shifts in the debate on immigration reform by considering the geographies of protest. Our findings point to the importance of urban hubs of activists and organisations that have worked with one another over extended periods of time. While these urban hubs constitute distinctive activist worlds, they have also connected to one another and coordinated nation-wide actions through a variety of networks (social media, interpersonal, and inter-organisational). Using interviews, network analysis, and data on funding, we show how this decentralised network evolved and eventually outflanked nationally centred and reformist advocacy organisations in recent anti-deportation campaigns.

Building protest online: engagement with the digitally networked #not1more protest campaign on Twitter

Abstract This article examines engagement with digitally networked, politically contentious actions. Maintaining engagement over time is a key challenge for social movements attempting to network digitally. This article argues that proximity serves as a condition to address this challenge, because it configures the personal networks upon which transmission depends. This is a paradox of digital activism: it has the capacity to transcend barriers; however, proximity is essential for sustaining relations over time. Examining Twitter data from the #not1more protest campaign against immigrant deportations in the United States, quantitative and social network analyses show a differentiated development of engagement, which results in a particular geographical configuration with the following attributes. First, there is a robust and connected backbone of core organizers and activists located in particular major cities. Second, local groups engage with the campaign with direct actions in other cities. Third, a large and transitory contingent of geographically dispersed users direct attention to the campaign. We conclude by elaborating how this geographically differentiated configuration helps to sustain engagement with digitally networked action.

Counter Publics and Counter Spaces

The aim of this theoretical essay is to explore the links between the oppositional identities of marginalized groups and the cities where these groups are rooted. It performs the task by examining the spatial underpinnings of counter publics. Building alternative political imaginaries and oppositional publics necessarily involves the production of space. We therefore situate counter publics in their specific urban spaces, i.e., counter spaces. Our hope is to untangle some of the mechanisms linking the cities where combative groups emerge to the oppositional identities that fuel broader struggles for recognition and equality. The paper is theoretical in focus and content. Its central premises are illustrated by examples drawn from research on movements struggling for immigrant rights and LGQBT rights.